The foxkin leader who I presumed was the mayor led the way and we followed. Given that the town was quite small and almost everyone was hiding indoors, it didn’t take us long to reach our destination. The location was a large building. I didn’t understand the purpose until I was inside. In some ways, it was reminiscent of the rooms that Astria had built where she was turning local girls into fairies. There were rows of beds, and there were sickly looking children filling every single bed. I had noticed a lack of children when I arrived, but I hadn’t thought much about it. It seemed like every child in the village might be there.

“This is… a hospital?”

“After… it happened, all of the children in the village became ill.” He responded weakly.

“It?”

“Her curse… she cursed us all to death. She said it was the gift we deserved.” He made a bitter expression as if he was lost in his thoughts. 

“You don’t look dead to me.” I frowned.

“The adults are fairing better, but make no mistake. We are all sick. You may be thinking that Lady Death spared us. This is far from the truth. She is just doing it slower.”

Whether this was caused by Miki or not, I couldn’t sit back while the children suffered. I walked to one of the beds and put my hand on the forehead of one of the children. The child had their eyes closed, but they were squeezing them shut like they were experiencing pain. The child’s forehead was sweaty, and their body was pale and thin.

I hadn’t noticed beforehand, perhaps because this was Miki’s village and I had been expecting other foxkin to look similar to her, but the foxkin were all somewhat pale and thin. I tried to think of any other foxkin I had encountered, and I didn’t recall there being a staple for their kind.

I pulled out various spells from my White Mage arsenal. I used Moderate Heal. Moderate Heal Poison, Purify, Cure Disease, and so on.  I ran down the list of fixes that I knew, and a few moments later, the child’s eyes eased up and their complexion improved.

“Y-you’re a priest?” The leader asked worriedly.

As a general rule, the animalkin didn’t like priests. They were too closely associated with spirits and death. Even the foxkin had this level of unease. I had hoped that foxkin, given their tendency to produce animalkin with spiritual tails, would be better. I had hoped this, but knowing what had ultimately happened to Miki, my hopes hadn’t been high.

I had asked the wolfkin how their kind was resurrected, and apparently, their church had shamans instead of priests. As for how shamans differed from priests, I didn’t know, but I could imagine the similarities that would be suitable for the animalkin. If priests could be said to use mana, and dark priests used miasma, then perhaps shamans depended on gaia. It might be something like that.

“No, I’m just a mage with some healing ability,” I explained as simply as I could, causing his tension to ease.

From there, I moved to each of the kids and healed them. It had been a while since I focused so much on healing.

{White Mage has increased to level 60.}

{You have unlocked the spell, Regeneration.}

It wasn’t the first time my job skills showed a redundancy with my dungeon points. This was a bit different though. Regen only worked on me, while this could be cast on anyone. I was somewhat curious how quickly I would heal if I had both Regeneration cast and Regen equipped. It seemed like my path to becoming a broken character was continuing one way or another.

“Thank you for this.” He said. “Unfortunately, it won’t change our fates. Let’s continue.”

“This isn’t what you wanted to show me?”

He shook his head, a look of shame on his face. There was more to see.